Jeff Crosby & The Refugees

Bret Mosley

About Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons

Jerry Joseph & the Jackmormons have announced their four day NYE run, and we're proud to announce that we'll be hosting the big closing night at the Bagdad Theater!

For more than 30 years, Jerry Joseph has been strapping on a guitar
and chasing down truth, understanding and soul with a tenacity and
resonant skill that mark him as a hard charging kindred spirit to Joe
Strummer, Warren Zevon and Patti Smith. While not a household name or
critic's darling, Joseph is the archetypal musician's musician,
something resoundingly clear on his sweeping new double album, Happy Book.
Captured with muscle and blood by Joseph's longtime trio the
Jackmormons, this latest chapter in his long, strange journey flows like
glowing quicksilver through the modern psyche, where war and disaster
wrestle with hope and faith and sometimes the best option is to sashay
down to the local disco to mambo with the chicks with dicks just to
remind one's self that you're never too old or too dead to learn a
couple new tricks.

Happy Book (arriving March 20, 2012 on Response Records)
presents the Jackmormons at their most diverse and confident, a record
with a wide swing that dexterously moves from whisper closeness to
Technicolor expansiveness. Many of the songs on Happy Book were written
in Mexico right after Joseph's father passed away but then left
wide-open so the band could be part of the writing process, producing an
emotional and sonic wallop fueled by the tightest, tastiest playing
Joseph (guitar, lead vocals), JR Ruppel (bass, backing vocals) and Steve Drizos (drums, backing vocals) have ever captured in the studio.

"The reason I play in this band, the reason I go through what I go
through to be in this band, is there's always a point when we're onstage
that I think, Man, if there's a better fucking three-piece rock band in
America I don't know who they are. It doesn't happen all the time, but
when it does it's a reminder that this is an once-in-a-lifetime band,"
says Joseph. "After 17 years, this album brings together a lot of things
I've always wanted on a record. I've wanted to make a double record
since I was a kid. This sounds like a band that's been together 17 years
and evolved along the way."

Joseph first came to prominence in the mid-1980s with still-beloved cult band Little Women,
a reggae-rock proto-jam band that dominated the Rocky Mountain club
scene for nearly a decade, and notably helped break jam giants
Widespread Panic, who looked up to Joseph and opened for his band before
rising to prominence. To this day, many of Panic's favorite concert
staples were written by Jerry Joseph, including such blazing epics as
North, Chainsaw City and Climb to Safety. Today, Joseph neatly describes
Little Women as mash-up of Burning Spear and the Grateful Dead dressed
up like the New York Dolls.

The other two key ingredients to the Jackmormons, JR Ruppel and Steve
Drizos, are also musical lifers working steadily for decades both as
sparring partners to Jerry Joseph and elsewhere. Drizos was a member of
acoustic Dexter Grove from 1995-2004, who performed over 1500 shows
nationally. Drizos produced the live Jackmormons record Badlandia and
co-produced Happy Book, as well as performing and recordings with such
luminaries as Dave Mason and Jim Capaldi (of Traffic), Widespread Panic,
The Decemberists, moe., Merle Saunders, Eric McFadden, as well as
dozens of local Portland artists and bands. Ruppel has recorded and
played live as a solo artist and with Fabuloso and Moheynow. As far as
being part of the Jackmormons, Drizos says, I love the intensity of this
band, the songs and live performances. Playing drums for this band
sometimes feels like driving a runaway train about to fall off the
tracks at any moment but always manages to arrive at the station.

"Columbia Record Club used to have 20 records for a penny and I filled
out form after form, and these boxes of records came to my house and my
parents would flip out. Those were my influences," says Joseph. "I was a
kid, so I was as into The Monkees as I was The Beatles. Then, my mother
would tell you, it was all over on my 9th or 10th birthday with [Black
Sabbath's] Master of Reality and Steppenwolf Live. Then at 12, it was
jazz. I saw every jazz act that toured in the 70s Herbie Hancock and
Tower of Power after we went to see Steely Dan. All that and then my
older babysitter bought me Exile on Main Street and I saw [Bob Marley
and] The Wailers in 1976 and moved to New Zealand. And then The Clash
came out and changed my life. But I also loved ZZ Top and all those
guitar bands. When I lived in New Zealand, I sat in my window and read
Lord of the Rings while listening to prog like Gentle Giant and Camel.
Later, I learned a lot from Chris Whitley touring around Europe with
him."

As 2012 gets rolling, Joseph is steadily extending his global reach,
taking advantage of the Internet's ability to find audiences worldwide
with tours in Southeast Asia, Europe and elsewhere, another hyper-gifted
American singer-songwriter finding appreciation beyond his own
country's borders. However, Happy Book may be the perfect introduction
to American audiences that have yet to discover one of the most
striking, talented musicians of the past quarter century, an endlessly
insightful rabble-rouser and back street shaman whose creative tendrils
extend beyond the Jackmormons into extensive solo work, a duo with
percussionist Wally Ingram, rangy rock juggernaut Stockholm Syndrome
(where Joseph plays with Widespread's Dave Schools, Bay Area guitar
marvel Eric McFadden, Gov't Mule's Danny Louis and Ingram), and a host
of unreleased work.

Despite the sort of roadblocks and turns of fortune that usually
crush most musicians, Joseph survives, and in fact, thrives in a way
that's heartening and stirring on Happy Book, a clear-eyed survivor's hymnal.

"I'm lucky. I work. I've never had to play in a cover band. I've never
had to wear a funny hat, says Joseph. Perhaps because of the lack of
traditional success, I've put out about a record a year, plus all the
stuff that's never come out, and it's kept me creatively honest. I don't
rehash my past. I don't repeat any of my old hits because I don't have
any big hits [laughs]."

About Jeff Crosby & The Refugees

Jeff Crosby is a 25 year old songwriter/singer, and multi-instrumentalist
transplanted from Idaho to Los Angeles.

Although you'd never know it from his playing, Crosby wasn't born with a
guitar in his hands. When Jeff first picked up a guitar at the age of 14, he
knew from that first touch of the strings that he was in love. He began jamming
with the local mountain folk on the back porches of Donnelly, ID, and by the
following year, he had played it so much that he had worn the frets off. You can
still hear those "back porch" influences in his country infused rock
music today.

Crosby's performing chops were cut in his late teens, when he would sneak
(sometimes in vain) into every smoke filled bar from Boise to Portland to get
gigs. These days of well spent youth paid off, and by the age of 21, Crosby was
fronting psych-rock jammers, Equaleyes, and touring like a fiend.

By 2010, Jeff was ready to switch gears, and showcase his songwriting
skills. 2011's self-titled LP, Jeff Crosby, is a gem that invokes the
greatest singer/songwriters. Performer Magazine called it, "The right
addition to any singer/songwriter fan's collection." Crosby's rich,
hook filled music and his smooth vocals combine with poignant lyrics to make
each track its own gem.

His new EP, Homeless and the Dreamers is a five song, introspective
journey of self discovery that charts Jeff's changes in latitude, the culture
shock of moving to L.A. from small town Idaho, friends and lovers that were
left behind, and the discovery of new ones. Stand out songs include the title
track which charts Jeff's journeys and the dreams that got him there, as well
as the dreams of the people he met along the way. There's also the gorgeous
"Silent Conversations," which was written while standing in the
doorway of a catholic church in Colombia during a torrential downpour.

Look for Homeless and the Dreamers to drop on July 4th. A special EP
release party will take place at the Annual 4th of July Celebration in McCall,
ID. Crosby will be touring in support of the new album throughout the summer
and the fall with his band The Refugees (Will Prescott - drums, Daniel
"The Hawk" Blumenfeld - keys, and new addition, Jeff's brother,
Andrew on bass). Of course, Jeff and crew will be back in Idaho for his August
3rd & 4th Idaho Down music festival at Brundage Mountain Resort in McCall,
ID, both with Equaleyes, and as Jeff Crosby & The Refugees.

About Bret Mosley

Rarely could an artist be said to transcend, yet include, the most raw and
real elements of Delta blues, roots rock, folk, funk and rap. Nevertheless-with
bone-deep authenticity-that's exactly what Bret Mosley does, wrestling deftly
with longing, belonging, and world-weariness...on the way home to hope &
grace.